


A Joke Made in Poor Taste

by Dooiney_Oie



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Mainly about glamour springs, P sure this is getting into hurt/comfort territory but who knows, Rated teen for swears but nothing you wouldn't hear on the show, Takes place in that sweet spot after the eleventh hour but before the suffering game, Talking about Feelings with some light angst and a bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 09:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12010371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dooiney_Oie/pseuds/Dooiney_Oie
Summary: Kravitz pulls a prank, and Taako is not very impressed to say the least.Obligatory 'Taako vents abt his backstory' fic





	A Joke Made in Poor Taste

**Author's Note:**

> Was thinking abt how Kravitz is kinda like a vampire and then whether he’d be okay with garlic and then it suddenly got a little angsty and also kinda long, whoops

 

 

Taako slides a plate across the counter of the kitchenette in the common area of the reclaimers' home on the moon. Magnus and Merle are out doing fuck knows what, and that means quality time with Kravitz - and since he doesn't have to worry about making a dead man any deader, that means showing off his cooking skills.

Even so, he still pauses.

“Wait, can you even eat garlic? You’re not gonna like, burst into flames or anything like that, are you?”

Kravitz laughs. “I’m dead, not _un_ dead. Garlic’s fine. Here,” he says, taking a whole roasted clove from the plate in front of him and putting it in his mouth as if to prove it. “Gods, perfect as always.” He smiles, then freezes, mock fear all over his face. “Oh no! I was so wrong!” He cries dramatically, hands over his chest, “it burns!” Taako stifles a giggle as Kravitz throws himself across the counter. “The eternal grim reaper, killed by his own boyfriend with nothing but a clove of garlic!”

Taako is giggling even more now. “All right, you fuckin' dork, I get it.” He sniffs, trying to pull himself together.

Kravitz has stopped mock-choking and is sprawled across the surface of the counter, face down. Of course death incarnate would do a perfect impression of a corpse.

Despite himself, Taako feels a spark of fear.

“Babe?”

But Kravitz still doesn’t move. White-hot panic shoots up from Taako’s stomach and into his throat as he grabs his boyfriend’s shoulders and shakes him. No response. His vision flickers around the edges. He shakes harder.

_Nonononono not again not him-_

“Krav! Kravitz! _KRAVITZ!_ ”

Kravitz raises his head ready to share a laugh over his little prank, but his smile dissolves when he sees wide-eyed terror plastered across Taako’s face.

“Woah, hey, I’m sorry. I was only-”

“It wasn’t funny.” There’s a tremor in the elf’s voice, and his hands are shaking as he draws them back from Kravitz’s shoulders. “Never do that to me again.”

“Of course, I’m so sorry, love, I never meant to scare you that much.” The reaper is stumbling over his words in concern.

Taako draws a shaky breath, steadying himself against the counter with white-knuckled hands.

“Well, you did.” He lets the breath out again, turns and slides his back down against the counter until he’s sitting curled up on the floor. “Istus’ fucking threads,” he curses, mostly to himself, pressing his forehead against his knees.

Kravitz pushes himself back and stands from his seat, moving around the counter to crouch in front of the figure on the floor. He rubs his hands quickly against his thighs so they aren’t completely icy, and slowly reaches out to lift Taako’s face up towards him. The elf’s eyes are wet and red around the edges, and he won’t meet his gaze.

“I am truly sorry. I didn’t realise it would upset you so much, it’ll never happen again, I promise.”

Taako groans and knocks his head back against the wooden cupboard behind him with a soft clunk.

“Gods, you’re so fuckin’ nice I can’t even be angry with you.” He sniffs a little, a frown creasing his face. “My bad, I overreacted, just-”

He pauses for a long moment, chewing his lip.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Kravitz wipes some of the wetness from the elf’s eyes. “You clearly have a reason, that’s enough for me.”

Taako groans even louder this time. “There, again!! Too fuckin' nice, it’s ridiculous.” He sighs as he lowers his head to finally meet Kravitz’s gaze. “I’ll spill. But if you think I’m gonna do it sat here and without a bottle of wine in me you’re sorely mistaken, bone boy.”

“Only if you’re sure.”

Taako pushes himself up and brushes himself off, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. I haven’t managed to scare you off so far, may as well get this little nugget of fun out in the open, too.”

Kravitz takes his hand as he also stands. “You’re not gonna scare me off, love. I guarantee it.”

“My dude, if you don’t stop being so nice to me, I’m gonna have to get physical, and then I _definitely_ won’t be ruining the mood with this sob story.”

Kravitz frowns. “I thought you’d never made a melee attack in your life.”

“Not what I meant by physical, nerd.”

“O-oh. Right. Well I’ll uh, grab a bottle opener.”

“And here I thought I could divert you with that one.” Taako’s words suggest reluctance, but he’s already holding a new bottle of wine and heading towards one of the sofas in the small common area next to the kitchen.

It seems like part of him wants to get this out, Kravitz thinks.

 

\--------

 

They settle on the cushions with a glass of wine each and Taako’s legs draped across Kravitz’s lap. It’s silent for a little while, until the bottle is almost empty, then Taako sighs and says, “all right.” He runs a finger around the rim of his glass, making it sing slightly. “So. I told you about my cooking show, right?”

“You did. I wish I could have seen it.”

Taako winces a little. Kravitz scolds himself; clearly that was the wrong thing to say.

“Well, I never mentioned the reason that I’m not doing that any more, did I?”

“You didn’t.” Best just to keep it short.

Taako pauses for a minute, the crystal still singing gently against his fingertip as he runs it around and around the lip of the glass.

“It’s weird, I always kind of assumed you’d know about it, what with you being a spooky skelly grim reaper and all.”

Kravitz is starting to put the pieces together in his head. “I don’t collect every soul that passes from this plane, just the ones that try to escape their fate.” He smiles, and rubs a thumb over Taako’s knee as he continues to trace circles on the glass. “Or the ones who’ve died more times than they have any right to.”

Taako doesn’t react, his brow still furrowed despite Kravitz’s attempts to cheer him up. His eyes are somewhere else as he stares into the wine at the bottom of the glass like it’s a scrying pool. The vibration from his tracing fingers is creating tiny ripples on the surface of the liquid.

“Right.”

The singing stops as he clamps his hand over the mouth of the glass.

“There was this town.” He sighs, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the arm of the sofa. “Glamour Springs. Nothing as fancy as you’d think from the name.” His fingers move back towards the edge of the glass before he catches himself. “It was still a nice place though, good crowd.”

Another long silence. Kravitz squeezes his knee encouragingly, but says, “it’s okay if you want to stop.”

Taako flicks an ear in irritation. “What did I say about being nice to me, homes.”

“All right!” Kravitz raises his hands defensively even though the elf’s eyes are still closed and his face is still pointed towards the ceiling. “When you’re ready, though.”

“Hmm.” Taako taps his fingers against the glass in his hands. It seems to be grounding him, Kravitz thinks.

“I ran the whole show the same as usual - everyone loved it. What’s not to love, right?” He's gripping the glass so hard now it looks like it might shatter. “And then I passed out the food I’d made, and 40 people died.”

Kravitz nodded, slowly. That fit with what he’d put together. “Tha-”

Taako sits up suddenly and slams his glass down on the table, turned to sit properly with his feet on the floor instead of across Kravitz’s legs. “And I thought it was my fault! So many years, and I couldn’t cook for anyone, I couldn’t even show my face, so I started doing mercenary work because y'know I can do magic and I’ve already got dozens of deaths on my hands, what’s a few more? It’s not like it makes any difference and I’m not good at anything else and I didn’t have anywhere I could go-” he runs out of breath, head resting in his hands, elbows on his knees.

Kravitz waits a few moments, seeing if the rare rush of emotion is going to continue before reaching out and placing a hand on the elf’s back. “You _thought_ it was your fault? But it wasn’t?”

A sigh. Taako slides his elbows off his knees and lets himself fold completely over, arms hanging towards the floor. His voice is muffled with his face pressed into his legs again. “Apparently not. Only found that fun little tidbit out kinda recently. You remember that whole thing in Refuge. Fuckin’ magic cup.”

“Ye-”

“It was my _fucking_ assistant. He was jealous, or something, which I guess was kind of my fault. Was my fault. I didn't wanna share the spotlight.” He sits back up, leans back into the sofa with eyes still tight shut. “One bottle of arsenic to poison a brand I spent years building. And the worst part was,” he clenches his fists, “was that he probably wasn’t even aiming to end my career - I think he was trying to end _me_ , and all those people died because of it.” He rubs his eyes. "Collateral damage."

Kravitz reaches out tentatively, uncurling the fingers of the clenched fist closest to him and moving them until their hands are interlocked.

“I have a feeling you know this already, but your not wanting to share the show doesn’t put those deaths on your shoulders. You can’t blame yourself for it.”

Taako snorts. “Yeah, I got that part down.” He lifts his head, looking straight ahead into the middle distance, and Kravitz knows he’s seeing the faces of Glamour Springs again. “Old habits 'n' all that, though. I just spent so long thinking everything I touched was poison, and the feeling never quite goes away, y'know?” He flashes a pained smile.

“I understand. Thank you for telling me.” He lifts their locked hands and kisses the warm fingers pressed against his cold ones. “Sorry again for scaring you. The joke was in, uh,” he winces a little at the words coming out of his mouth, “it was in poor taste.”

Taako punches him in the arm. “Fuck you.” He giggles a little, though. “Besides, s'cool, bone man. If a little fright could kill me I think I’d have a lot more red marks in your ledger, right?” He grins mischievously, although the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hmm. I don’t think you frighten as easily as you think you do.” Kravitz kisses Taako’s warm fingers again, moves his other hand to touch the soft skin of his face. “Not many people are bold enough to flirt with the grim reaper when he’s actively trying to kill them.”

“Hmm. What did I say,” Taako purrs, leaning towards him, “about being nice?”

The smell of the wine is strong on his breath - he’s a lot more drunk than Kravitz had thought.

“Aren’t you tired?”

Taako pouts indignantly. “Elves don’t need to sleep.”

“The effort you’re putting into keeping your eyes open and the empty bottle of wine on the table beg to differ.”

“Fuckin’,” the elf stifles a yawn, “spoilsport…” He rests his head against Kravitz’s shoulder. “Thanks for listening to all that bullshit, babe.”

“You don’t need to thank me. I'm glad you trust me that much. And I like listening to you talk, I don’t care what it’s about.” He smiles and leans over to kiss the top of his boyfriend’s head. “Unless you’re gonna tell me you’ve died again, in which case keep it to yourself.”

A small snort of laughter comes from below. “Gonna drag me to hell, reaper man?”

“Not today. I will put you to bed before you fall asleep on me, though.”

The yawn Taako has been trying to hold down finally escapes. “…nnt fuckin’ tired… y’re cold ‘nyway… asshole….”

Kravitz scoops him up and carries him to his bedroom, receiving only token protests, and leaves him curled on his side under a pile of blankets. As much as he’d love to stay on the sofa with Taako’s warm head on his shouder and his soft hair against his skin, it won’t do to have the other two reclaimers come back and find their teammate unconscious in their quarters with someone who tried to kill them not too long ago. Come to think of it, they might also ask questions about the pair of plates and glasses, so he turns towards the door to go discard the cold, uneaten food, (Taako will hate that, but he’d hate his friends prying even more,) and wash up.

“Krav?”

He stops. “Yeah?”

“Thanks. You’re a good listener.”

“Any time.”

 

\--------

 

When Taako wakes up, hours later, he finds a note written in fancy, looping script lying on the pillow next to him. He picks it up.

_Good morning. Don’t worry about cleaning up - I took care of it._

And then, underneath:

_I hope talking about it helped you feel better._  
_Love,_  
_K._

There’s a small ‘x’ scratched under the _K_ as well as a tiny drawing of a flower. Taako runs his fingers over the words.

Who knew death was such a fucking sap.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I love writing these two, hopefully they're vaguely in character.
> 
> If you want me to add any warnings to this, do let me know, I'm still getting used to how I should tag things on here.


End file.
